I really don't know why I even bother watching a Brady/Manning matchup. Even when it looks like Peyton's team is kicking ass, I know what's going to happen. Or, if I don't, I should. Fucking waste of time.

Sloppy game on both sides, trying to hold on to that frozen ice cube they were using instead of a football

That said, I liked what I saw in this game, after, you know, the 0-24 first half. Good mix of players stepping up, no one overwhelmed by the situation, and got a glimpse of old school 'genius' Belichick again in this one. He'd been missing for a while, but ballsy call on defering the ball in OT. You don't see that very often, especially choosing to give Manning the ball when a TD ends the game without you touching it. I thought the captains just fucked up on that one, and the announcers had just finished telling us that choosing the wind rather than the ball would be stupid. Belichick then immediately does that, of course. BUT, if you can prevent the TD, it would have been a bitch of a FG, and essentially forced the Broncos to need to get another 10 yards every drive, versus being able to try longer FGs on the Pats' own drives. Ended up directly affecting Denver, having them punt on what would have been about a 55 yard FG. Pats didn't end up needing the wind boost on their kick, but it definitely played a factor in the punting/field position in OT.

So much for the Packers-Vikings border battle. That tie kind of screwed both teams. The Packers are still behind the Bears and Loins in the standings and the Vikings may have lost a chance at the #1 draft pick. And the fans on both sides spent 3+ hours watching dreadful football for nothing.

This is the most important step. Follow it and you'll be fine. Forget it and the whole story falls apart. Because here's the one principle that guides this whole thing: You can demonize only Suh if you maintain the illusion that football etiquette matters — that the violence is only harmful when it violates the sport's rules.

Just make it simple. Suh once pounded a man's head into the ground then stomped on that man with a cleat as he rose to walk away. That is bad. And Suh might have meant to kick Matt Schaub in the balls, like he might have meant to take out John Sullivan's knees. And he might have laughed when Winston Justice went down, perhaps taking pleasure in the harm he'd caused another man. Then there are his hits on quarterbacks. Jake Delhomme's neck rotating like an owl's. Jay Cutler's head bouncing off the turf. They're gruesome sights, so vile that it might make you question your love for the sport.

But that's where the denial comes in. You have to ignore the quotes like Joe Ganz's — "It's just football" — not because they let Suh off the hook but because they remind us that the whole endeavor is gruesome. Ignore the research that shows that the long-term damage to players comes not from highlight tackles like Suh's but from the cumulative effect of small hits that occur in every game, every practice, every day. Cut Suh's quotes like this: "The damage comes from those constant little hits, those small little train wrecks or car crashes that happen on every play. Where you're head-butting a guy, or a guy's pressing you and he head-butts you — that kind of stuff that happens constantly."

Gloss over the way that the NFL and its compliant media (present company included) portray athletes like Suh as villains. It's useful for them to make an example out of someone, to tell themselves and the fans that they're serious about player safety by coming down hard on a player who has been branded as dangerous. If we can crack down on big hits and dirty players, the thinking goes, then we'll really clean up the league. Bigger fines and longer suspensions and realer consequences will lead to greater accountability among players. The game still won't be totally safe, but we can make it a safe place for fans to have a clear conscience while they high-five over brain-rattling hits.

Emphasize that Suh has almost certainly endangered another man's long-term health. But don't get into the research that says the realest danger came not from stomps or kicks or the grabbing of face masks, but from the simple fact that he plays football, and football inflicts damage on every play of every game. Keep up the appearance that Suh's tipping point came when he threw that punch in high school or when he cranked Delhomme's neck before he had ever played a regular-season game. Don't acknowledge that the real moment Suh became an agent of destruction was much earlier, on a late-summer afternoon when he was in the eighth grade.

Suh had never played football, but he decided to try out for the team. "I had no idea what I was doing," he says. "I just listened to the coaching." They told him to hit, so he hit. They told him to tackle, so he tackled. They told him to do what football coaches tell football players to do. Pulverize the man in front of him. Let nothing stand between Suh and the ball. "I liked to disrupt stuff," he says. Because he was big, he could do that, and he did. Everyone patted him on the back. Suh felt cool.

He was a football player now, and he was good.

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I think the article makes lots of good points, but it also glosses over the more indefensible things that Suh did. I think he's unfairly overly maligned, but I can't see he's unfairly maligned.

True. Football players sign on knowing full well that the game is violent and brutal. They do not sign up for it to be open season in between plays like the Packers player that got kicked in the head or him trying to rip Delhomme's head off. I like football and I have no problem saying that Suh's is a dirty player. I don't think that is hypocritical.

The Packers sure looked ugly on Thanksgiving. Shows just how one-dimensional they are: Without Rogers, they can't do a damned thing on offense. And with Dom Capers as their defensive coordinator, they need to score plenty to win.

Pretty stupid of me to pick up Matt Flynn in fantasy- I would have been better just leaving the QB position blank.

At least with the flex scheduling, the Packers game next week was moved to the early time and they don't have to worry about embarrassing themselves on national TV again.